faith

This devotion was written to my daughter who is preparing for marriage in a few short weeks. It was written by her mentor and my dear friend Melana Hunt Monroe and read aloud yesterday at a bridal shower. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. My prayer is that this encourages someone today.

“Endurance IS the currency of heaven” ~Melana Hunt Monroe

My beloved Cassidy,

The day you got engaged you posted, “We are overjoyed and can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for this next season!” If I could confidently share words that would enable you to navigate marriage with all the joy and hope you have right now, I would in a heartbeat. But that wish reveals my tendency to shrink from thinking on a loftier, grander, heavenly scale. I think I would be closer to God’s heart to share with you how He matures our love and joy and hope towards resembling His own eternal, unchanging emotions, through a million minutes of happiness, grief, dread, delight, terror, amusement, enchantment, disappointment, and ecstasy over scores of years.

Truth be told, we all deeply want this. No one wants to have the maturity of a twelve-year-old at the lovely age of eighty. Your Father has a VERY specific plan to ripen your spirit, and He has designed every single step (every.single.step.) in a way that will give you the greatest, purest joy.

Though your journey will be entirely unique (because you two are unique and He’s designed your path for YOU), there will be common features of the terrain that His children recognize (remember Christian’s journey to the Celestial City). I’ll share a few landmarks I’ve seen, in the hope that you will recognize and embrace them as they come along.

WAITING.

There will never be a time you are not waiting. Right now you are waiting (eagerly) for your wedding. You will wait to graduate, wait to find a house, wait to find out if you are pregnant, or with some, wait through months of agonizing infertility for repeated dreaded news, maybe eventually wait for delivery, wait to see if the baby is “ok” (I could write a lot on that one), wait for good news, wait for bad news; waiting can become agony. You will always be waiting for something, and sometimes that process is excruciatingly hard. God places incredibly great value on waiting well. Trust, hope, faith, dread, all imply that what we see ahead must be bought with intentional patience. Hidden in all of the hundreds of Scriptural admonitions to wait (even the whole creation is waiting eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God), is the key, tucked in the opening verse of Ps 62: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. Then repeated in verse 5: For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him.

You see, my dear Cassidy, every desire of our heart, if it does not lead to waiting on God only, can quickly morph into an idol. The process of waiting reveals what we value the most at any given time. When what we are waiting for consumes our emotions and energy, when it is what our mind boomerangs back to, it becomes the thing that – when fulfilled – will bring happiness rather than the Giver of every good gift Himself. And joy from an idol is hollow, frail, and temporal. I’ve found that God has kept me waiting until “waiting” becomes a friend. Waiting, as a true friend, leads me to Him, and is not just a (frustrating) constant companion. Here you can be a great helpmeet for Tad. You will lean on each other to wait well, being strong when the other is weak, to intentionally keep your focus on God alone.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. (Ps. 25:4-5). “Waiting all the day long” leads to:

ABIDING IN CHRIST

Do you remember Augustine’s prayer, “Command what You will, but give what You command”? When we apply his ancient wisdom to Christ’s commands in prayer, the commands become not only doable, but life-giving and hopeful (“hope is the present enjoyment of a future blessing” – quote from my dad). It is strikingly evident when Christ Himself gives the ability to believe and obey His command to ‘Abide in Me.’ Faith is a gift; it is not attainable through effort, Eph 2:8-9…that’s why the perceptible presence of faith itself IS the evidence of things not seen, Heb 11:1) Many choices in married life are not ‘right or wrong’ or ‘black and white.’ Whether to eat this or that, live here or there, are not as important as the time in prayer together, searching, abiding in Christ with one mind. This process can take a LOOOONG time. Which is why we have need of:

ENDURANCE

I think endurance can develop through three different situations. First, there is a kind of enduring where, though the trial is real, painful, and wearisome (even vexing), the outcome is visible and sure. An example would be these last creeping, slow days before your wedding, or the last agonizingly long month of a pregnancy. Even a terminal illness like my mother suffered fits in this category. The days are long, but the end is visible.

Second, there is a kind of endurance where the outcome is unknown. The trial is long, and there is no indication or evidence that it will resolve, if ever. The fiery test has no expiration date; although we can ask God to resolve the issue, His concern is that we learn to be longsuffering, develop patience, resolve, trust; to study, learn, apply, pray, and ultimately simply stand until He says stand down. I’m thinking here of a dear friend, a lovely young woman in her thirties, who longs to get married, but has absolutely no prospects. Other examples would be waiting for employment or for funds to come in, or for resolution to a horrible family relationship. There is hope for an end, but no timeline at all, if ever. The process is the terminus.

The third “flavor” of endurance is when we know for sure there will not be a resolution or end to the trial until He glorifies us after death. Here, your own dear father’s suffering, and my little Eve and Lissy are good examples. Embracing His strength in our weakness is the goal. We can even learn to see joy inside of the sorrow. Every time I look at my granddaughters I feel both intense joy and overwhelming sorrow simultaneously.

I believe endurance is the ‘currency’ of heaven. It has such extreme value, Hebrews says that it was worth the horrific agony of the cross to pay for ‘the joy set before Him.’ Love makes endurance possible. Endurance does, however, have a limitation: we can only develop our eternal capacity for endurance here and now – what will there be to endure there? What will there be to be patient with in heaven? So if we earnestly yearn for an eternal weight of glory, sorrow and suffering will accompany us up our mountains, faithful companions to our Much Afraid. But remember that the Good Shepherd does change Sorrow and Suffering into Grace and Glory!

Back to your post. The Lord has in store for you great, massive, verdant meadows of great joy for frolicking. Some of that joy will come as a gift, from the Giver of all gifts, who simply delights to give you delight. Enjoy it immensely. He also will have you wait, agonizingly, to the point you can honestly say “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in Thee.” You will abide together in Christ, so that “you can ask what ye will, and it will be done unto you,” and through abiding, together you will “bear much fruit” and your “joy will be full.” And together you will endure pain, because your unity will become purer and stronger and brighter in the crucible. Everything “in store for you” is already planned for your good and His glory. Embrace it all. Jesus is Lord.

Do you live with chronic pain? Perhaps you have a child who has strayed from the Lord. Or maybe you are looking at that mortgage payment that is now at three months past due and there are no clients for your commission-only husband. When does suffering move from visiting us as a result of our mistakes, to visiting us because it’s God’s gift?

Born with Cerebral Palsy, my precious husband has a saying, often repeated in our home.

“Adversity is my tutor”.

Why is it that we tend to be more in tune to God’s voice when we are facing storms rather than when the sun is shining?

The Israelites were more than happy to follow Moses out of Egypt, their place of bondage and suffering, when the Lord delivered them. However, after 3 days of travel, with no fresh water or food in sight, the people began to grumble.

Exodus 15:22-26

Then Mosesled Israel from theRed Sea, and they went out into the wilderness ofShur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water.When they came toMarah, they could not drink the watersof Marah, for they werebitter; therefore it was named Marah.So the peoplegrumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”Then hecried out to theLord, and theLordshowed hima tree; and he threwitinto the waters, and the waters became sweet.

There Hemade for them a statute and regulation, and there Hetested them.And He said, “If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lordyour God, and do what is right in His sight, and give earto His commandments, and keep all His statutes,I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I,theLord, am your healer.”

I have a friend, one of the godliest women I have ever met, who, like my husband, carries a daily cross of suffering. Her name is Melana (Hunt) Monroe. She is daughter of Prayer Titan, and author of the classic book, The Mind of Christ, T.W. Hunt. Her father passed away in 2014 leaving a legacy of prayer and faith behind him. Currently, God is writing a powerful story of faith and courage through the Monroe family as they face unbelievable challenges. In a nutshell, thanks to technological advances, four of her six adult children have been diagnosed with a gene which causes stomach cancer. Each one must have their stomachs surgically removed in order to save their lives and drastically increase their odds for living a long healthy life. Melana, like her father, is a prayer warrior for her children and the spiritual fruit in her life is transformative. I have had the special honor of sitting under her teaching and watching how these trials have given her unbelievable spiritual vision and focus. Her youngest daughter, Chesney, recently shared a quote by theologian John Calvin in her blog post https://livingstomachless.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/through-pain-comes-joy/

“You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.”

Melana’s prayer life models for me what sowing while suffering looks like. As another daughter, Katie, faces an upcoming surgery, Melana lives on her knees, praying through every detail. God is using the faith legacy of her father, to teach others how to sow with vision, even during times of suffering.

As Moses threw the tree God showed him, into the bitter waters of Marah and the waters became sweet, I pray that the Lord will show me how to reach out in faith for the tree of life, praying and believing…even during times of suffering.